Thursday, February 24, 2011

It’s been two years since the movie premiered at The Anthology Film Archives on February 23, 2009. Seems like ages ago.

Someone once described the movie to me as a snapshot of a particular moment in time. I think he was right. I wonder if now, in 2011, the movie has the same “in-the-moment” feeling that it did then (dated references to Lost and Quantum of Solace aside).

In honor of our anniversary, I wanted to repost a review by Tom Russell from September 2009. You remember in english class, when you’d read a book and the teacher would dissect and read into it and attribute intention to every last punctuation mark? I always figured that while some stuff is surely conscious and intentional on the part of the author, a lot is projected on to the work by readers after the fact. But Russell’s close analysis of The Lionshare is spot on with every point. He caught it all. He picked up on all the threads that I pained to pull together to make my point, and he got the point exactly. Which tells me something important about the movie. If The Lionshare was able to communicate all that to someone whom I’ve never met, who had no pre-knowledge of the movie whatsoever, then I’m confident saying that my first serious filmmaking effort was a complete success. Do give it a read if you have a few minutes: http://turtleneckfilms.blogspot.com/2009/09/josh-bernhards-lionshare.html

My current project is a series called Pioneer One, made with a lot of the same people who worked on Lionshare with me. It’s a completely different kind of story, and it’s much more ambitious. And The Lionshare was the preface to everything we’re working on now. I’m immensely proud of that.

Couple tid-bits: YouTube has recently lifted the length restrictions for a lot of accounts, including mine, so I’m planning to upload the full movie in the near future. I’d hoped to have done it by now but I haven’t been able to get to the full-rez version yet.

And lastly, there’s a very real possibility that a Lionshare series might be coming down the pipe pike. Stay tuned…